The one factor that dominates every other reason to spend more
A new survey from SMG, IAB, and IAB UK of 281 industry professionals found that proven, measurable return on investment with incremental sales impact is overwhelmingly the top factor that would convince brands to increase retail media spend. Among 161 brand respondents specifically, 74, or 46 percent, named this factor, and no other single theme cleared 8 percent, an unusually lopsided result for a survey asking an open ended question about investment barriers.
That lopsidedness is itself a notable finding. Retail media has been one of the fastest growing categories in advertising for several years, yet this survey suggests brand side appetite to spend meaningfully more remains gated almost entirely on one specific, concrete requirement rather than a diffuse mix of concerns spread across price, targeting quality, creative flexibility, or platform trust.
Activation is where the funnel breaks down most
The survey asked respondents to rate how well connected different stages of the retail media funnel feel across the broader industry, and activation came in lowest at just 17 percent, trailing measurement and planning at 28 percent, consumer insights at 29 percent, and creative at 30 percent. That ordering suggests the industry feels reasonably connected on understanding its audience and planning campaigns, but meaningfully less connected on actually executing them smoothly across channels and retail media networks.
This activation gap likely compounds the ROI measurement problem identified elsewhere in the survey: a campaign that is difficult to activate consistently across channels is also harder to measure consistently, since inconsistent execution makes it difficult to isolate what specific tactic drove whatever sales lift did occur.
Unified briefs and reporting remain the exception, not the norm
Only 14 percent of respondents said they always start multichannel retail media campaigns from a single unified brief, and separately only 14 percent said they always receive unified cross channel reporting. Both figures point to the same underlying operational reality: most organizations running retail media campaigns across multiple channels and networks are still doing so with fragmented planning and fragmented measurement rather than a single coherent process.
That fragmentation directly undermines the ROI measurement that 46 percent of brands say is the one thing that would unlock more spend. It is difficult to prove incremental sales impact with confidence when the underlying campaign was planned in pieces and reported on in pieces, which suggests the operational fix, unifying briefs and reporting, may be a precondition for solving the measurement problem brands say matters most.
A split verdict on AI that is worth taking at face value
Forty four percent of respondents expect AI to be the biggest competitive advantage in retail media within three years, while a separate 39 percent call AI the most overhyped technology in the category today. These are not necessarily contradictory positions held by different people: plenty of respondents likely believe both that current AI retail media tools are overhyped relative to what they deliver today and that AI will become a genuine competitive advantage once the technology and the industry's use of it matures.
Retail media leaders should read this split as permission to be skeptical of current vendor claims while still investing in the underlying capability, rather than treating the overhype and advantage numbers as opposing camps that need to be reconciled into one consistent industry opinion.
The confidence numbers and what they mean for network relationships
Fifty four percent of respondents rated their confidence in retail media networks at 7 or higher out of 10, but only 17 percent gave a 9 or 10, putting average confidence around 6.9, a solidly positive but not enthusiastic rating. Separately, 47 percent see in-store as the most valuable channel to connect with other retail media channels, yet 41 percent also call in-store the hardest channel to actually connect, and 23 percent say cross retailer activation is the hardest capability to scale.
Together these numbers describe an industry that trusts its retail media network partners reasonably well in the abstract, but faces specific, named operational obstacles, particularly connecting in-store with digital channels and activating consistently across multiple retailers, that keep that trust from translating into the kind of unified execution brands say they need to justify spending more.
Why this survey's limitations matter as much as its findings
This survey measures stated perceptions among 281 professionals rather than actual advertising spend or verified campaign results, and it reports no country breakdown and no margin of error, limitations that matter more given some of its subgroups, like the 161 brand respondents behind the headline 46 percent figure, are themselves fairly small. The 46 percent figure specifically comes from coding open-ended text answers into themes, a process with more room for interpretation than a closed multiple choice question would allow.
It is also worth noting plainly that SMG, one of the survey's sponsors, sells consultancy and technology services to the retail media networks that make up part of its own respondent base, a conflict of interest that does not necessarily invalidate the findings but does argue for treating this as directionally useful industry sentiment rather than a precise, independently verified measurement of the retail media market.
